Seeing the Pattern Before Copenhagen: Scientists Threatened in Four Essential Areas of Study

By T. Jefferson

Scientists (and thus science) are threatened in four central areas of human existence – agriculture, health, environment and peace. The threat comes from multinational corporations seeking absolute control over world resources and political power through national laws and international treaties based on false or incomplete science.

The Genetic Engineering of Food and the Failure of Science

Image at http://bit.ly/7lPpQE

By Don Lotter, PhD

A major conflict over this issue has developed. On one side are scientists, universities and corporations who have invested nearly 25 years and tens of billions of dollars in the genetic engineering of crop plants. On the other side is a flood of evidence that the process of food plant transgenics (genetic engineering) is deeply and fatally flawed and has been resting on a theoretical foundation that has crumbled away as the science of genetics reinvents itself.

Don’t Flush Trees: Eco TP Ratings

Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide

By Greenpeace

The Guide , which can be downloaded to your mobile phone, makes it quick and easy to find out which brands of facial tissues, toilet paper, paper towels, and napkins are truly green and which should be avoided. Our experts have carefully evaluated over 100 brands and recommended those that contain 100% overall recycled content; contain at least 50% post-consumer recycled content; and are bleached without toxic chlorine compounds.

This must be New York’s final harvest of shame: Let us finally protect exploited farmworkers

By Kerry Kennedy

This holiday season as we sit down with loved ones, it is important to remember those whose labor produced the wonderful food on our Thanksgiving dinner table. There’s near-slavery in New York, and it’ll be served up across the state today in turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie and corn bread.

Use Reduced NAIS Funds to Dissolve Program Altogether

By R-CALF

A 100-group coalition – in a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and a separate letter to Congress - is urging that the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) be dissolved completely and that all 100 organizations look forward to working with USDA “…to enhance our nation’s animal disease preparedness in a manner that builds upon our past successes and respects the interests of U.S. livestock producers and consumers.”

The pharmaceutical industry toasts to your ill health

By Ed Steene

Your good health translates into zero profit for the pharmaceutical industry. General well-being of the public and cures for disease would mean the collapse of the pharmaceutical industry since they must have illness to have demand for their drugs, in order to exist. This is the truth that drives political corruption, mandating of vaccines, control over the healthcare industry, and efforts to destroy natural health companies and practititioners.

PASTEURIZATION: Pulling the Plug on Scientific Fallacies Undergirding Our Industrial Food and Drug Culture

By Linn Cohen-Cole
December 31, 2008

The terrible things happening to non-corporate farming and pure food rest, oddly enough, on liberal assumptions about science and their trust flowing from those assumptions. That trust leads not to better choices for all Americans but to mandatory regulations and to programs which have destructive consequences for farmers and food and our health.

New Report: GMOs Causing Massive Pesticide Pollution

By Andrew Kimbrell
HuffPo

Two new reports this year on genetically modified foods expose Monsanto and other biotech company lies. The first by Union of Concerned Scientists,  Failure to Yield, came out in February. The latest report comes from Organic Center: Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years, and exposes that pesticide use has increased with GM crops.

PA Food Police Banned from Monitoring Private Club

By Farm to Consumer

On November 17th, Magisterial District Judge Jene Willwerth dismissed both charges brought by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture against C.A.R.E. member Jan Haller in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.  Before cross examination of the Department’s two witnesses was even completed, the Judge dismissed the charges without prejudice.  “He made the right ruling” said the Fund’s attorney Gary Cox “because they simply had no evidence of any violation.  It was a sloppy investigation from start to finish.”

Extinctions, Over-Population and the Profit Paradigm

The six great extinction spasms, with projection thru 2100. From http://bit.ly/7Eaq5Q

By Rady Ananda

Human activities are blamed for what may be Earth’s greatest extinction spasm. Of the five categories of these activities, the world’s wealthy focus on purported over-population, ignoring their own environmentally destructive actions from which they wrought their wealth.

“Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?” Mathew 7:3

Medicinal properties of sage revealed

By Mike Adams
Natural News

Of all the culinary herbs, sage is perhaps the one with the broadest range of medicinal uses. As you’ll see in the collection of quotes about sage shown below, sage is anti-hypertensive, anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial; plus it helps cleanse your blood and may even prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

You may not have known all these amazing health applications for such a simple herb. Check out the quotes below and learn what health experts like Dr. James Duke are saying about sage…

Corporate Land Grab: The new farm owners

Corporate investors lead the rush for control over overseas farmland

By GRAIN

This table accompanies this article.

With all the talk about “food security,” and distorted media statements like “South Korea leases half of Madagascar’s land,”1 it may not be evident to a lot of people that the lead actors in today’s global land grab for overseas food production are not countries or governments but corporations. So much attention has been focused on the involvement of states, like Saudi Arabia, China or South Korea. But the reality is that while governments are facilitating the deals, private companies are the ones getting control of the land. And their interests are simply not the same as those of governments. 

America at Bat: NAFTA, Bailouts, and now the Food Supply

By Patrick Henry

It is well-planned — one, two, three strikes for destruction of the country.

1.  Bill Clinton outsourced our industry under NAFTA (how did Hillary get a single vote in Ohio?).  Since then, the US has been stripped of virtually all its industrial base.

2.  George W. Bush “outsourced” our economy, setting up the bailout that funded international banking interests.  Obama followed, even signing an agreement in May with the G-20 arranging that the US has only one vote in its own banking system now.

3.  And now the final grab, one which puts the loss of jobs and money into pale comparison – corporations are going after control of the US food supply.

The Festering Fraud behind Food Safety Reform

By Nicole Johnson

A New York Times article by Michael Moss provides a window into well-hidden meat industry practices that most find revolting, but omits critical information about today’s meat inspection process.  If we don’t grasp how the meat industry’s inspection process became an essentially unregulated, privatized affair, we are likely to allow Congress to pass food “safety” legislation that will serve global cartels but do nothing for the safety of the US food supply.

Obama’s Pesticide-Pushing Nominee

By Kate Sheppard
Mother Jones

The president taps an exec from the pesticide lobby—which slammed Michelle Obama’s organic garden—for a top agriculture post.

Monsanto Withdraws High Lysine GM Maize from Europe, Safety Concerns

Monsanto withdraws maize from regulatory approval citing commercial reasons

By Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Peter Saunders
Institute of Science in Society

In a dramatic move, Monsanto has withdrawn its genetically modified (GM) maize, LY038, from commercial approval in Europe after safety concerns prompted the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to request further evidence from the company [1].

Consumer Reports Studies BPA in the Food Supply

Concern over canned foods

Our tests find wide range of Bisphenol A in soups, juice, and more

By Consumer Reports

The chemical Bisphenol A, which has been used for years in clear plastic bottles and food-can liners, has been restricted in Canada and some U.S. states and municipalities because of potential health effects. The Food and Drug Administration will soon decide what it considers a safe level of exposure to Bisphenol A (BPA), which some studies have linked to reproductive abnormalities and a heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, and heart disease.

Now Consumer Reports’ latest tests of canned foods, including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans, have found that almost all of the 19 name-brand foods we tested contain some BPA. The canned organic foods we tested did not always have lower BPA levels than nonorganic brands of similar foods analyzed. We even found the chemical in some products in cans that were labeled “BPA-free.”

BPA in Our Food, Our Bodies

By Nichoals D. Kristof
The New York Times

Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It’s a synthetic estrogen that United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies — to the tune of six pounds per American per year. That’s a lot of estrogen.

More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it — though not conclusively — to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.

Under wraps: Genetically Engineered Seeds

By Emily Waltz
Nature Biotechnology

Are the crop industry’s strong-arm tactics and close-fisted attitude to sharing seeds holding back independent research and undermining public acceptance of transgenic crops?

The increasingly fractious relationship between public sector researchers and the biotech seed industry has come into the spotlight in recent months. In July, several leading seed companies met with a group of entomologists, who earlier in the year had lodged a public complaint with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over restricted access to materials. In a letter to the EPA, the 26 public sector scientists complained that crop developers are curbing their rights to study commercial biotech crops.

Antibiotics bill gathers momentum in Congress

By Margaret Mellon

In a recent speech on the House of Representatives floor, Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY) encouraged House members to support the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA). The bill would end the use of antibiotics in the feed and water of livestock and poultry that are not sick, a practice that leads to antibiotic-resistant diseases in humans.